


Locus Amoenus

by queerofhearts



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aging, Angst, Arthritis, Heavy Angst, M/M, Marriage, Multi, Old Age, Paris Honeymoon, Retirement, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Tragedy, the cat dies (sorry)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:20:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25724245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerofhearts/pseuds/queerofhearts
Summary: How many more years do they have? How long is a fraction of a fraction? What is a moment in the oppressive onward turn of the earth?~Aziraphale and Crowley go full native.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 49





	Locus Amoenus

The first thing that happens is the Bentley gets towed.

He’s owned it for nearly a hundred years and never had trouble with parking before, from the side streets of Soho to the front lawn of Buckingham Palace. But he looks out his flat window and there’s just empty street.

“My car was towed,” he gasps, the bookshop door banging behind him. Aziraphale glances up from his book.

“Just bring it here, then.”

“I can’t.” He cannot say what he’s thinking. His tongue is heavy and dumb.

Aziraphale sighs, holds his place in the book with his finger, then gestures.

Nothing happens.

He gestures again. Crowley looks out the windows, shakes his head.

The book clatters to the floor. Aziraphale is looking up and shouting and his hands are wild, and Crowley’s legs can’t hold him upright anymore.

It’s gone dark when Aziraphale returns to sit on the floor beside him, a hand on his shoulder.

“Oh,” he says. “Oh.”

~

The problem isn’t that they didn’t know about the systems of the world. They helped set up a lot of it. Crowley remembers credit scores and high interest loans and background checks. Aziraphale remembers healthcare and food banks and free 30-day trials.

The problem is that it was never personal for them. They never had to learn the rules.

~

Crowley watches Aziraphale straighten his kippah. He’s attending synagogue this week. 

"Even if you actually get through to Her. Why would She help? Do you think there’s anyone else in the universe who could have done this to us?” Crowley’s voice is clipped and harsh. Everything is empty when Aziraphale is away, painful, concave, collapsing in on itself.

Aziraphale smiles anyway, smooths out his shirt. “I won’t give up hope. Sometimes prayers are answered, you know.”

Crowley can only speak from personal experience, so he doesn’t talk about his unrequited begging, his pointless supplications, or when he learned that hope is a flame that burns. He just sighs, and Aziraphale leaves, and Crowley thinks about the time they have left in terms of days, hours, minutes, seconds.

~

“We need money,” Aziraphale says one day, like he isn’t crying when he says it.

Crowley’s hands-on approach to devilry proves to be useful. He can forge a property deed, sniff out a greedy real estate agent. Sells his flat for cash, moves in upstairs. Aziraphale buys him wine to celebrate, but it just makes him sleepy these days.

~

Crowley is ornery as a rule. If he let himself sink into the softness here, he fears Aziraphale wouldn’t have anything to stand on. Something to feel normal. As though he isn't every second aware of the new meaning of their breath, their heartbeats.

“I can’t believe you’re all in there,” Aziraphale tells him when it's dark, moving back and forth in front of him. Crowley’s knees fall akimbo.

“What d’you mean?”

They drink their whiskey.

“I mean, you’re all inside that body. All your essence. Before you were overflowing into the world. Now, you have a container. With a lid.”

He lifts up his glass a centimeter, lets it drop down on the desk. It thuds. He does it again.

“That isn’t to say… I mean. You’re here, too.” Waves a hand around to indicate the shop. “You’ve left your mark on the world, certainly, when it’s all said and done. And here.” He thumps a palm against his chest.

Crowley sniffs instead of sobbing.

“I don’t think it counts, really, if nobody knows it was you. Hell will have burned all my memos by now. And it’s not like there’s anybody up here who even knows my name.”

“Crowley.”

He swallows. Holds out his hand, reaching across the gaping chasm.

“ _Crowley_.”

~

Aziraphale lays out a prayer mat and kneels facing east.

Crowley Googles _do angels have souls?_

~

Their bodies hurt. All the time, they hurt. There’s pain from having too much food, not enough food, from processing food. (Aziraphale feels betrayed.) There are headaches and nosebleeds and hangnails and paper cuts and bruises. A cold, the flu, strep throat.

At first, they try to treat it like a novelty, a game, checking off symptoms on WebMD like bingo cards.

Then, it becomes exhausting, the constant ache of living. They snip at each other, have fights over things they don’t remember. Crowley rips apart a book before he remembers that Aziraphale can’t fix it. Aziraphale hurls a plant at his head, and Crowley doesn’t duck, and it cuts his cheek, dirt in his mouth, bruise marks from sunglasses.

(“So you’ve made me human, and you didn’t bother getting rid of these?” he has shouted in the mirror.)

“It’ll take some time to get used to.” Even laid up in bed with snot leaking everywhere, Aziraphale is an optimist.

It takes time.

They get used to it.

But it takes time.

And that is exactly the problem.

~

“Have you done it before?”

“Yes, once or twice. You?”

“Yeah.”

A moment.

“I don’t want-- was always afraid you’d think I was just tempting, or something. That I didn’t really mean it. Or… that it would ruin things.”

“My dear. There’s no one else in the universe for me. Even if that doesn’t work out for us, I wouldn’t leave you.”

“…Right, then. Uh. Same.”

“…”

“Sort of… icky. Not—not you. Just, in general. The concept.”

“We don’t have to.”

“No. No. I want to. With you.”

~

Crowley sells the Da Vinci and gets tattoo after tattoo after tattoo. His body is suddenly much more interesting and far too unadorned.

~

Aziraphale is sitting at his desk. He’s been typing for two hours. Occasionally he will huff and press one key for a long time, then begin again.

Crowley attempts to hover.

“Trying your hand at erotica?” he drawls, slapping down a copy of _Maurice._ He had a good tease when he found it, so obviously well thumbed.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Aziraphale replies smugly.

That is enough to make Crowley want to lunge and wrestle the mouse out of his hand. But he leaves it, enjoying the levity, Aziraphale's smiles and teasing.

Yes, he would like to know. He wants to know every part of Aziraphale he can. He wants to dissect him, lay his pieces out on the table to peruse, to build him back together with Crowley inside and safe.

~

Crowley comes home to find Aziraphale in a twisted, unconscious lump at the foot of the stairs.

Crowley has never been in a hospital before. He never had the instinct of healing, and all the pain makes him sick. It smells and everything is designed to be uncomfortable.

He makes things up on the forms they hand him. No family medical history. No smoking, monogamous sex, writes in “anti-” before checking the box for “social drinking.” Of course they’re married. 

“I think we ought to simplify things,” Aziraphale says in a soft voice. He’s pale and sweaty and looks like death, like a glimpse of the future. He has a new hip.

“Always fancied the South Downs, personally,” Crowley replies, pushing his glasses up and laying cards down on the table with wheels.

“Excellent. Give me a year.”

~

The books slowly leave the shop. They aren’t sold, and Crowley doesn’t bother to pretend to be angry about it. They get donated to charity auctions, given to strangers as tokens of kindness, appraised and treasured in museums. A lucky few make their way into boxes.

“It would seem that a lot of them were holding up miraculously. They ought to go to loving homes.” Aziraphale is letting Crowley help put plastic covers on the chosen ones, ensuring their safety for what will only be an hour or so on the road.

They don't need the wheelchair anymore, but it lurks in the corner, waiting patiently.

~

Crowley dyes his hair at the first sign of grey, hides the evidence.

Aziraphale, the bastard, gets silver streaks peppered in gradually, barely recognizable among the white-blond. His beard is white.

~

“What would you like to do today?” The angel asks cheerfully over tea. He is an impossibility sometimes. Crowley shrugs.

“I was thinking we could get married.”

Crowley chokes.

They get married 30 days later, because Aziraphale was more romantic than he was inclined to research. It's October 14th. They are witnessed by an elderly couple, the woman wearing a pillbox hat. Crowley kisses Aziraphale until he blushes, which doesn’t take long, so he kisses him some more.

They blow the last of the Mayfair flat money in Paris.

~

There's pieces of them, all over the world. Almost everywhere they go, Aziraphale can point to a building and say _Remember the woman here, her olive oil?_ or _I was so cross with you for almost getting killed here._

Crowley takes pictures on his phone, so Aziraphale can still point and remember.

~

On the train home, Aziraphale is typing on his phone. Crowley lifts his head from Aziraphale's chest and tries to read. He puts down the phone and strokes through Crowley's hair, so Crowley can't really be mad.

~

The bookshop gets them more money. Not as much money as certain men in dark suits were offering, but enough that they can find their home, live comfortably. Their agent asks if they have plans to travel. Crowley mutters something about Mesopotamia being in Iraq.

They stand in front of their quiet cottage, papers signed, dates arranged, moving vans waiting for solicitation. Birds sing their approval.

“ _Locus amoenus_.” Aziraphale has his head on Crowley’s shoulder.

“Naughty, angel,” Crowley teases, taking Aziraphale’s hand and squeezing.

~

How many more years do they have? How long is a fraction of a fraction? What is a moment in the oppressive onward turn of the earth?

~

Almost all of Crowley’s clear memories involve Aziraphale. The past eleven years are among the most fresh and well-defined. Fortunately, they are also the best, most fondly remembered.

He is lucky, he tells himself. They are bound together. He is spending the rest of his life with Aziraphale. _Partners_. He didn’t ever dare to hope for this before, and now it’s happening.

It could have ended years ago, he tells himself, in fire and water. They have some time, and it is a mercy as much as a punishment.

~

Some days, they forget.

Some days, they get up, and Aziraphale makes breakfast while Crowley nurses his coffee. They dress and spend the day in the garden, Crowley with big gloves while Aziraphale supervises from his lounge chair and book. Lunch on the patio, sandwiches and lemonade. At the end of the day, Crowley is terrifically dirty and smiling as they step into the shower together. They have leftover takeaway, Aziraphale wins at Scrabble, and they sleep in the bed that they didn’t bother to make that morning. It’s routine and filling and warm. It's normal and enjoyable and precious.

Some days, it’s so blissful that they forget they’re dying.

~

Crowley cuts himself with garden shears. He looks at the neat row of tiny black stitches and considers that a pale outline of the wound will still be on his body after his heart has stopped beating.

~

They celebrate their anniversary with expensive trips and weekends in London. When they neglected to mark the passing of another year, they found they could hear the sound of sand streaming into the bottom of the hourglass.

~

Their skin stretches and folds. Marks appear and vanish and appear again. Aziraphale complains about his knees, Crowley about his crepey skin, the tattoos that distorted and faded. They fuck and talk about people who made art in their 70s.

~

One day, a cat wanders in through their open screen door and drops a mouse at Aziraphale’s feet.

Crowley is delighted. Aziraphale less so.

They adopt the cat anyway, or possibly, the cat adopts them. She eats their food and some garden pests. Crowley names her Lilith and lets her nap on the sofa.

Aziraphale is still getting used to Lilith when he finds her still and cold in a patch of tall grass.

Aziraphale holds Crowley while he sobs brokenly.

~

He types away at his laptop on the sofa. Crowley makes tea and squints across the room through his glasses. Aziraphale’s hands shake but he pecks out words one letter at a time. Crowley wants to know all the letters.

~

Doctors begin to blur together. Arthritis. Cataracts. Kidney disease. Crowley really fucking hates hospitals. He wants their cottage, he wants to be alone, he doesn’t want anything else taking up Aziraphale’s last minutes.

They have to hire someone to tend the garden. They have to hire someone to tend Crowley’s pills and Aziraphale’s machines.

~

Crowley ambles around and around in circles, taking in the detritus of their life, how wine bottles and plants and books were replaced with pill bottles and plastic bags and printout instructions. How stupid it is to depend on _things_ for survival. He curses God, silently. He curses himself, silently. Aziraphale sleeps in the room at the end of their home. He curses that it’s not enough that they’re together. He curses that they’re out of time.

~

“Promise not to rush after me,” Aziraphale says. He’s skinny, far too skinny, and small, and his hair is patchy, but his eyes are exactly the same. He tries to press on Crowley’s hand but he can’t quite manage it.

Their whole life was a rush. Crowley had been savoring and waiting and grasping onto precious things. Now it's ended, and he's grasping even harder, as though he could somehow make the tearing away hurt more.

_Where are you going? Where are you going?_

All the lights are fading. Aziraphale is taking color with him.

"I love you. Aziraphale."

“I have always loved you, my dear, but I never deserved you.”

“Angel, please—“ _Where will I be able to find you again?_

“I have a gift for you.”

He points to dresser drawer, where Crowley pulls out a bundle of papers. “Sharene helped me print these.” Every word is an effort, said around several breaths. “I wrote about us, Crowley.”

Crowley feels struck dumb, his tongue useless and heavy. He leafs through the pages, leaving round wet stains, glancing back up to see Aziraphale’s eyes closed, his lips cold and still.

“Aziraphale!”

_Where did you go? Where did you go, angel?_

“ _Aziraphale_!”

~

Crowley pours himself a glass of wine. Everything is quiet. He’d forgotten that there was beeping.

He sits at their table, a wanderer resting at the end of his journey, and he reads every word on the papers. He laughs, he sobs, he writes notes in the margins, on post-its.

Aziraphale has written about the world as seen through his eyes. His words are full of energy and light and power and love. Crowley finds himself there, as seen through those eyes, more beautiful and ethereal than he'd ever been.

Aziraphale has given him the whole world, all the things that mattered, and he gave it again even after he was gone.

He's lucky, extremely lucky, and he's also alone.

When he turns the last page, Crowley takes the rest of his wine and the pills and lies down next to his angel.

~

~

~

Sharene’s final effort for her employers is to get the book published. Scrawled and shaky writing becomes footnotes in the tale of an angel and a demon, the two who pushed the carousel of life to turning and hopped on for the ride.

The book ends with them clasping hands, black and white, silver and gold, facing the hollow darkness.

~

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to the other writing I neglected to do this.


End file.
